How to Keep Alive the Interior Life

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:



Every day I try to read a little from literature that is richly written and that stirs my soul. These last months I’ve been slowly perusing and underlining the book How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch. Poetry has always been a difficult genre for me to understand, but the author is a master teacher and suddenly, as I study his writing and the samples he includes, this world of literature is opening to me. Poems are becoming comprehensible, astounding, soul-shaking and renewing.

I’m halfway through Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, for example, and I hear the thunder in the pages and have to close the volume. One can only stand so much ecstasy at a time. A new acquaintance loves and understands the work of Ranier Maria Rilke, so I have begun again to read the Duino Elegies; this is like reading another language, so I am going slowly, slowly, knowing that I can question my friend when I don’t understand (and there is much that I don’t understand).

This quote from Hirsch’s writing arrested me, and I’ve been asking myself the question in the days since I wrote it down in my prayer journal on April 3, 2012:

“The question poses itself as to how to keep alive the interior life in the face of our own and the world’s corruption.”

What a provocative inquiry. How do we (how do I) keep alive the interior life in the face of my own corruption as well as the world’s corruption?

I understand that God is often more a questioner than He is a forth-teller. So I am taking this disturbing question as something that has come my way because He wants me to chew on it.

First of all, what are my own corruptions? Where is the decay within me that pollutes the purity that an interior journey needs in order to sustain itself? I need to be still and let the Spirit whisper the answers to my heart.

Secondly, what are the corruptions of the world that compete with the maintenance of interiority? What is an interior life? Does everyone have an interior life? What must I give up? What must I clean out? What activities must I cease and what activities must I
establish in order to feed the soulish part of myself that is often starved by corruptions? How can I utilize the life that is given to me so that I can be fully alive?

Questions. Questions. Questions. There will be answers. The pathway lies ahead.

I spy God!

Opening Our Hearts and Homes

In Open Heart, Open Home (over 500,000 copies in print) award-winning Karen Mains steps far beyond how-to-entertain you hints to explore the deeper concepts of Christian hospitality-the Biblical way to use your home and an open heart to care for others like God wants us to. Countless pastors have recommended this classic resource as the meaningful example of how the Holy Spirit ministers to and through us to make other people feel truly welcome and deeply wanted.

Perfect for any womens bible study group, especially when used in tandem with the Opening Our Hearts & Homes Bible Study.

This new edition contains 54 helpful ways to make hospitality work whether you live on a country farm, in a house in the suburbs, or in an apartment in the city. Everyone in your bible study will appreciate the life-changing principles of this timeless classic. 

Slings and Arrows

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:



David and I have gone up to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario for some 39 years. Rather than have a cabin on a lake, or a vacation getaway, we have returned to this little stone town with its four theatres and amazing cultural life, inviting friends and family and acquaintances to come with us. Theatre in this environment, with the finest repertory company on the North American continent, has enriched our souls. Will Shakespeare is part of our family history.

On several occasions people have recommended the Canadian television series Slings and Arrows, a fictional account of a theatre company much like the Stratford Festival. “No one says its about the Festival,” said the friend who most recently recommended this series, no longer on television, “But it’s about the Festival. We laughed our heads off.”

Since Slings and Arrows had been recommended so frequently and so highly by people whose judgments we trust (most of whom have traveled to the Festival with us), I ordered the four-year series through Amazon.com. Last night after a wearying day, I sat down to view the first segment of the first DVD. I ended up watching one whole season and laughed all the way through it. It was outlandish; it was fascinating; it was filled with actor’s ego and performer’s angst. And at the same time, the story lines were unaccountably sweet. This first season is about the mounting of the play “Hamlet” and finally, when the young Hollywood star who has been brought in to boost the box-office receipts, reaches the deepest meaning of the lines he has memorized, I leaned into the television set, moved mightily by the power of the language and brushed away the tears that began to swell.

Remarkably, despite its wild display of human foibles, this quirky television series has captured some of the transcendency we often feel when we sit in the theatre and watch the dramatic presentations of the Bard.

Slings and Arrows is by no means a Christian production—far from it. So I am often left to puzzle how it is that non-church people capture those moments that open up before us all and in which the holy, in which the sacred reside. We’ve actually had conversations with Shakespeare Festival actors about this very thing. Something numinous, something transcendent occurs; they know it, they recognize it when it happens, but they struggle for the words to explain it. “Those are the moments in the life of the theatre that we wait for,” one lead actress explained. Her colleagues nodded their heads in agreement.

Perhaps, for the rest of us, less talented certainly in the dramatic arts, we also wait for moments when God comes near, when the veil of this life parts a little, and we know His presence in a way we don’t always know it, and we bow like Moses before the burning bush. We have taken off our shoes.

Thanks be given for a life filled with friends who recommend great things to read or see or places to go. Rich thinking and beautiful moments of being come from heeding their recommendations. Somehow, often despite us all, God is present.

I spy God!

Off to Africa

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:



David and I have flown to Africa to visit the native land of the Global Bag Project. Since we will have intermittent internet connections during the next few weeks, I will have to suspend my blogging until I return.

Please pray that God will give us safety as we travel. Please also pray that we will be able to encourage all those who work in this important ministry. God has given us a very special gift of being able to make this trip. We desire to use this opportunity for His glory.

I spy God!

Slings and Arrows

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:



David and I have gone up to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario for some 39 years. Rather than have a cabin on a lake, or a vacation getaway, we have returned to this little stone town with its four theatres and amazing cultural life, inviting friends and family and acquaintances to come with us. Theatre in this environment, with the finest repertory company on the North American continent, has enriched our souls. Will Shakespeare is part of our family history.

On several occasions people have recommended the Canadian television series Slings and Arrows, a fictional account of a theatre company much like the Stratford Festival. “No one says its about the Festival,” said the friend who most recently recommended this series, no longer on television, “But it’s about the Festival. We laughed our heads off.”

Since Slings and Arrows had been recommended so frequently and so highly by people whose judgments we trust (most of whom have traveled to the Festival with us), I ordered the four-year series through Amazon.com. Last night after a wearying day, I sat down to view the first segment of the first DVD. I ended up watching one whole season and laughed all the way through it. It was outlandish; it was fascinating; it was filled with actor’s ego and performer’s angst. And at the same time, the story lines were unaccountably sweet. This first season is about the mounting of the play “Hamlet” and finally, when the young Hollywood star who has been brought in to boost the box-office receipts, reaches the deepest meaning of the lines he has memorized, I leaned into the television set, moved mightily by the power of the language and brushed away the tears that began to swell.

Remarkably, despite its wild display of human foibles, this quirky television series has captured some of the transcendency we often feel when we sit in the theatre and watch the dramatic presentations of the Bard.

Slings and Arrows is by no means a Christian production—far from it. So I am often left to puzzle how it is that non-church people capture those moments that open up before us all and in which the holy, in which the sacred reside. We’ve actually had conversations with Shakespeare Festival actors about this very thing. Something numinous, something transcendent occurs; they know it, they recognize it when it happens, but they struggle for the words to explain it. “Those are the moments in the life of the theatre that we wait for,” one lead actress explained. Her colleagues nodded their heads in agreement.

Perhaps, for the rest of us, less talented certainly in the dramatic arts, we also wait for moments when God comes near, when the veil of this life parts a little, and we know His presence in a way we don’t always know it, and we bow like Moses before the burning bush. We have taken off our shoes.

Thanks be given for a life filled with friends who recommend great things to read or see or places to go. Rich thinking and beautiful moments of being come from heeding their recommendations. Somehow, often despite us all, God is present.

I spy God!

How to Keep Alive the Interior Life

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:



Every day I try to read a little from literature that is richly written and that stirs my soul. These last months I’ve been slowly perusing and underlining the book How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch. Poetry has always been a difficult genre for me to understand, but the author is a master teacher and suddenly, as I study his writing and the samples he includes, this world of literature is opening to me. Poems are becoming comprehensible, astounding, soul-shaking and renewing.

I’m halfway through Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, for example, and I hear the thunder in the pages and have to close the volume. One can only stand so much ecstasy at a time. A new acquaintance loves and understands the work of Ranier Maria Rilke, so I have begun again to read the Duino Elegies; this is like reading another language, so I am going slowly, slowly, knowing that I can question my friend when I don’t understand (and there is much that I don’t understand).

This quote from Hirsch’s writing arrested me, and I’ve been asking myself the question in the days since I wrote it down in my prayer journal on April 3, 2012:

“The question poses itself as to how to keep alive the interior life in the face of our own and the world’s corruption.”

What a provocative inquiry. How do we (how do I) keep alive the interior life in the face of my own corruption as well as the world’s corruption?

I understand that God is often more a questioner than He is a forth-teller. So I am taking this disturbing question as something that has come my way because He wants me to chew on it.

First of all, what are my own corruptions? Where is the decay within me that pollutes the purity that an interior journey needs in order to sustain itself? I need to be still and let the Spirit whisper the answers to my heart.

Secondly, what are the corruptions of the world that compete with the maintenance of interiority? What is an interior life? Does everyone have an interior life? What must I give up? What must I clean out? What activities must I cease and what activities must I
establish in order to feed the soulish part of myself that is often starved by corruptions? How can I utilize the life that is given to me so that I can be fully alive?

Questions. Questions. Questions. There will be answers. The pathway lies ahead.

I spy God!

Friends and Strangers

Friends and Strangers chronicles the beginning of the journey into self-knowledge, a painful odyssey particular to the work of the middle years. This narrative focuses on the ages from 38-45. Each of us has hidden areas, lies we tell to ourselves that we don’t know we are telling. The work of the Holy Spirit is to continually bring us into truth. In this book I begin to look at truth through encounters with strangers, people I meet along the way, brought to me by God, who have rich gifts to give that shake my smug thinking. I am convinced that no encounter is casual, as each has the potential to move the ground beneath our feet, which is never as solid as we like to think.